xXx Relay followup

With the first day of CX racing for 2010 under my belt I had to report in. I have spent my summer thinking about cross, and it was everything I was looking forward to!

Although, yesterday was the first day I can remember in a long time (since I was about 7 years old) that I was wishing were older! One year off from being able to race Masters, and without a female partner for the co-ed, I was left with only one choice: the 1/2/3 race.

I had low expectations but high hopes going into the race. I've shed a ton of weight for this season and added some power to boot, but with guys like Mike Sherer, Mike Hemme, Scott McLaughlin, Brandon Leech, Newt Cole, etc etc, I knew a top-10 finish would be more than good to satisfy me.

Derrick took our first lap, and even though he had a great LeMans-type run, I botch up the hand off a bit. The organization of handing up had changed since he went to the start line, but we were off.

Finishing his first lap we were in 13th place, not a bad start at all! When I took off I had two guys immediately ahead of me, but they were working together on the fast sections and I was just out of touch about 40 feet behind.

Coming out of the only technical section, a set of off-camber turns and a barrier, I stood and sprinted along some pavement and closed the gap on those two. We then had a toilet bowl, a couple more turns, a barrier, then a long straight. I went all out and got around both of them on the straight just in time to tag off to Derrick.

A few more laps go by, and now the field is spread out. For me that's the hardest part, making yourself sprint with no one around. But out of each corner I tell myself: if you aren't sprinting you're losing time, because someone else is.

About 10 laps in a guy ahead of me washes out in the toilet bowl and rolls both of his tubbies. Something has changed in my thinking because even though we were going hard through there, I didn't dabble a bit, changed my line, and stayed really smooth. I thought that put us in 10th.

A few more laps down and I hear the bell for Derrick, which means I get the last lap. Knowing this was it, I went all out. I looked down at my Garmin less than 1 minute into the lap and my HR is 187. Awesome. This is what I needed.

I throw my bike over the barrier, remounted quickly and was off to the off-camber section. This has been getting looser and looser because of all of the riding, but I wasn't about to run it! I clicked into my small ring and stayed back on my rear wheel: no problem.

A couple more hard sprints, a few more corners, and it's over.

9th place for Derrick and I in the 1/2/3 race. Take out a couple of teams that we all knew would be top-5 (assuming no technical issues) and we were better than I could have hoped for.

Now back to the grind, a couple more good weeks of training and starving!

(Photo credit to Nikki Cyp)